Someone is carrying me. They hold me close, my head rests on their breast, and I listen to their heartbeat. I'm safe and warm in a way that I haven't felt since I was a child. Forgotten memories pass across my vision, of happier times, a smiling dark-skinned woman with a bright smile. A sterner blonde man looks down at me, but his sparkling blue eyes give away his happiness.
My worries and my stress all feel distant, unimportant. I could stay here forever, I think. I muster enough energy to turn my head and open my eyes, the memories vanishing, just enough to try and get a glimpse of who is holding me. They are looking straight ahead as I catch a blurry glimpse of her face. Feeling me move, she turns her head to look at me. She is expressionless, but those blue eyes are different. Those eyes are-
***
I awake to the steady beep of a heart monitor. My mind is fuzzy, and my body is numb. Struggling to open my eyes, I'm greeted by a ceiling backlit by a warm yellow light. Looking to the side, I see several empty medical beds just like the one I am laying in. The equipment is like nothing I've ever seen before, sleek and glowing with green lights. Maybe there might be something like this in the Itzli heartland, but for someone like me accustomed to the oldest and most obsolete equipment, it looks like magic. Soft gray walls are backlit by more warm yellow lights, and the room itself is pleasantly warm.
My body has regained enough sensation that I notice a weight on my stomach. A girl is laying on top of my bare chest. A curtain of pale blonde hair blankets my torso obscuring her face from sight as she uses the blanket covering my bottom half as a pillow. She wears a simple white dress with no embellishments, no fancy embroidery. She looks young, still in her late teens, but it can be difficult for me to judge age when every human I've ever met is malnourished and afflicted by rad-sickness. Her body is slim and short, coming up to my chest if we were standing, perhaps. I must have disturbed her because she raises her head and scoots forward to sit on my stomach, staring at me.
Her face is angelic, soft, and on the cusp of womanhood. She's healthier than any human I've ever seen before, traces of what can only be the remains of baby fat soften her features. She is well-fed with no signs of disease, injury, or rad-burns. Her blue eyes are deep as the depths of space, and I feel a sense of vertigo, like I'm falling just looking into them.
"You are awake." Her voice is soft, but its monotone inflection worries me. Her face is also expressionless.
"Yeah, I am. Who are you? Did you save me? Where is this?" I can't help the flood of questions that burst past my lips. I don't know what's happening. The last thing I remember is floating in that cavern, running out of oxygen, suffocating, dying. I tear myself out of the memory as she tilts her head to the side.
"I am called Hailey. I saved you, and you are on the S.U.N.N.S William Cody, a Mustang class Fast Courier Ship." I frowned, I didn't know of any nation or corp that used that tag on their ships. There was also the question of why the ship had what sounded like a human name.
"I don't know who that is." Her expressionless face changed to a slight frown, and her brow came down in confusion.
"The Solar United Nations is the name of the interstellar polity all known human systems belong to." I stared at her, my mind filled with confusion. Humanity has never had a nation to call its own, for the entirety of our recorded history, we've been stuck on the hab stations.
"Humans don't have a nation, or ships of our own for that matter. Hells, we don't even have a homeworld." My denial caused her frown to deepen.
"This ship was constructed at the Apollo Drive Yards orbiting Mercury in the Sol system in 2653. Sol is the home of humanity." Unbidden, hope surged through my heart. Was there a long-lost human nation out there trying to find us? Were we merely lost, and our home was searching for us?
"Where is it? Can you take me there?" I sat up and grabbed her in my excitement.
"Negative, the navigation charts have been wiped. This ship has no point of reference for its location relative to the location of Sol." My hopes fell just as quickly as they had risen, replaced with despair. It must have shown on my face because a small pair of arms wrapped around me.
"I am sorry." I felt warmth suffuse me, which had nothing to do with the room's temperature. This girl was trying to comfort me even though I was a stranger. How long had it been since I had seen another human? I felt like I could stay like this forever, my body craved comfort and the touch of another person.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Mentally shaking myself, I pulled myself out of my despair and tried to figure out my next step. I was on some sort of human courier ship that had... How had she rescued me exactly? There was nothing there but that stupid beacon. There was no ship or any other way out of that place except the way I came in.
"How did you find me?" I spoke softly as she held me.
"Following the last orders given, this vessel was to standby in subspace at this location until further notice-"
"How long? Wait, no better question, you can do that?!" I pushed her away from me to look her in the eyes, hands on her shoulders.
Another question with another outrageous answer, FTL worked by entering what was typically referred to as Subspace. There were many theories about it, but what all agreed on though, was that you couldn't simply "sit" in subspace. The lack of a point of reference made it impossible. All known subspace drives worked by setting the destination before transiting to subspace and using that data to calculate the time and energy needed in subspace to reach the destination. You were basically blind when traveling in Subspace, and gravitational drift made it impossible to stay stationary.
There were stories of ships, and even whole fleets, that had run into unexpected stellar phenomena such as a supernova, uncharted nebula, or an undiscovered quasar that had altered their route, and had been lost in Subspace or pulled out of it by the intense gravity right into the heart of a star or black hole. The only thing that seemed to affect Subspace was the gravity waves generated by celestial bodies, and something about Subspace prevented sensors from working. Many had tried before to map the strange dimension, and had received back nothing but junk data.
"In order, I have been standing by here for 521 standard earth years. We are capable of indefinite loitering in Subspace. 23 ESY ago, a malfunction in the Brane Drive occurred, forcing an exit from Subspace. I was ordered to effect repairs on the drive. During this time, I was discovered by the salvagers who left the beacon you destroyed. They were unable to force entry and left, presumably to return with better tools. By then, the Brane Drive was repaired, and I returned to Subspace. Your destruction of the beacon caught my attention allowing me to rescue you."
"So, what you're telling me is that this ship can 'see' in Subspace, and into realspace from Subspace?"
"Correct." I was dumbfounded. If I'd been anyone other than a Human, I would be set for life with the infinite money-printing machine this single technology would make me. But well, Human. There was no possible way to make a company to sell this technology without it getting stolen, copied, and my patents conveniently 'lost.' I'd heard of it happening to other corps, Human or not. I had access to a technology that would revolutionize space travel, and I couldn't do a thing with it.
Which was skipping over the issue that this ship was not, in fact, mine for the taking. There was at least one crew member I knew of, and possibly more in stasis. If so, I couldn't imagine why they woke up this young woman to effect maintenance on the drive. Some sort of former child genius maybe? She certainly spoke like one, no one I'd ever talked to spoke as she did. This was some kind of fancy military transport ship, after all. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that she was raised to be some kind of military scientist, maybe even genengineered for the role. Something else niggled at my brain too, though.
"You said you'd been asleep for over five hundred years? We don't even have records of humans going back that far. The most we know is from about 300 years ago, and it's not much different from what we're like today, living on old hab stations scraping out a living however we can. It doesn't make sense! If we're the remnants of some long-lost human expedition, and your ship just stumbled across us by accident by being told to wait here, then we should've been close enough that we'd have been discovered much sooner."
"I have no answers."
I rubbed at my scalp in frustration. None of this made sense. It was like this ship just appeared out of nothing. Barring a- Why do I have hair? I rubbed at my scalp some more to be sure I wasn't imagining things. Yea, that was hair alright. Short and stubby, but I was growing in hair.
"Why do I have hair?" I hadn't had hair since I was a child. Rad exposure had left most humans with a distinct lack of hair by adulthood.
"Your genetic code had to be repaired to successfully clone you a new leg. A side effect of this was the regrowth of your hair. I can have it removed if it is unde-"
"No! No, it's fine. I was just... Surprised is all. You regrew my leg?" Limb cloning and replacement weren't unheard of, but it wasn't something one typically had access to out here in the Verge outside of maybe a merchant house cruiser.
"Correct, your genetic code was repaired and optimized to facilitate the creation of a replacement limb for the one you lost." If she was annoyed at my constant interruptions she didn't show it, her face placid.
I wiggled the toes of my leg that I'd lost, feeling the muscles in it flex. Now that I thought about it, I felt better than I could remember ever feeling before. The ever-present sensation of weakness and anemia from the radiation damage was gone. A thousand different aches and pains I'd forgotten about had disappeared.
"How long was I asleep?"
"Fourteen standard days have passed since I recovered you from the cavern. A nutrient feed through an IV was used to help your recovery." I could tell, I was still bony and very skinny, but my ribs were much less prominent, and my arms looked less like sticks.
"Your recovery is not yet finished, you will need to stay in bed for several more days before you are fit to move. The damage to your body was extensive. Multiple cancerous growths were excised. Your body needs time to replace the removed tissue and repair the damage." I nodded, my mind drifting to another question.
"If you had orders to stay in Subspace, why did you risk yourself saving me?"
"Standing orders for the S.U.N.N are to answer all requests for help unless they would irreparably compromise the ship or its mission. I judged your rescue not to violate these directives." I searched her face for any hint as to what she was thinking. It would have been just as easy to justify staying in Subspace to remain undetected. The only evidence of her existence was the beacon in that cavern and a datapad sitting in a slagged ship in the middle of an asteroid field. I could gather nothing of her thought process, her face as inscrutable as before.
I felt a sudden wave of exhaustion come over me, and I fought to stay sitting. My bed elevated to meet me, and Hailey's small hands gently pushed me back to rest against it.
"You must rest your body needs more time to heal. Any more questions can wait until then. I will be back with a proper meal for you later." I was already beginning to succumb to my drowsiness. My last sight as my eyelids drifted shut was Hailey getting off my bed, pulling my blanket up, and tucking me in.